While the actual practice of contraception was not illegal in nineteenth-century Britain, it was dangerous to advocate birth control in print. The threat of being charged with obscenity and immorality, whether in a legal indictment, in a literary review, or in the court of public opinion, kept many writers from openly addressing this important cultural issue. In this paper, I focus on three women advocates for birth control who refused to be silenced: Annie Besant, Jane Hume Clapperton and Marie Stopes.

In 1877, Annie Besant published a tract on birth control and was arrested and charged with obscene libel. She served as her own attorney in a widely-publicized trial, which ironically for the prosecution, resulted in moving the taboo subject of birth control from the publications of the radicals to the headlines of the mainstream press. Jane Hume Clapperton made the case for birth control in a different forum — a novel — when she published Margaret Dunmore: or, A Socialist Home in 1888. This was the first novel in England explicitly to advocate for the use of artificial birth control. In the early twentieth century, Marie Stopes continued to publicize this controversial topic in her runaway bestsellers Married Love (1918) and Wise Parenthood (1918). Stopes also sued a vocal opponent of birth control for libeling her and made the hitherto utopian idea of widespread access to contraception a reality when she opened the first birth control clinic in Britain in 1921.

In this paper, I analyze the narrative advocacy of these women in the fields of law and literature, as well as the various approaches that were taken to censor their work.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished ManuscriptReview Method: Peer ReviewedAbstract: While the actual practice of contraception was not illegal in nineteenth-century Britain, it was dangerous to advocate birth control in print. The threat of being charged with obscenity and immorality, whether in a legal indictment, in a literary review, or in the court of public opinion, kept many writers from openly addressing this important cultural issue. In this paper, I focus on three women advocates for birth control who refused to be silenced: Annie Besant, Jane Hume Clapperton and Marie Stopes.

In 1877, Annie Besant published a tract on birth control and was arrested and charged with obscene libel. She served as her own attorney in a widely-publicized trial, which ironically for the prosecution, resulted in moving the taboo subject of birth control from the publications of the radicals to the headlines of the mainstream press. Jane Hume Clapperton made the case for birth control in a different forum — a novel — when she published Margaret Dunmore: or, A Socialist Home in 1888. This was the first novel in England explicitly to advocate for the use of artificial birth control. In the early twentieth century, Marie Stopes continued to publicize this controversial topic in her runaway bestsellers Married Love (1918) and Wise Parenthood (1918). Stopes also sued a vocal opponent of birth control for libeling her and made the hitherto utopian idea of widespread access to contraception a reality when she opened the first birth control clinic in Britain in 1921.

In this paper, I analyze the narrative advocacy of these women in the fields of law and literature, as well as the various approaches that were taken to censor their work.